Ken Richardson
We discuss the uses of mean curvature in studies of hypersurfaces, foliations, and other structures on closed manifolds. In the particular case of foliations, we explain how it generates an important class in basic cohomology, which is morally but not exactly the cohomology of the singular space of leaves. There are many interesting results about the choice of special metrics for the foliation and the resulting mean curvature forms. This survey talk will contain some mention of joint results with Georges Habib and with Igor Prokhorenkov.
